Shape Shifters, by Darrell Petska

Was Weiter? (What Next?), by Maria Lassnig (Austria) 2007. © Maria Lassnig Foundation, photo: mumok, Vienna / Lisa Rastl, Lena Deinhardstein

Shape Shifters

Like statues smug in their concreteness,
we basked in the conviction appearances defined us,
our persons etched in our faces and our glands.
Time abrades even stone: we are not as we knew,

the world's dogs having chased us inward,
gnawing our edges, shredding our coordinates.
What can we make of each other, knowing
our bodies' old tangos mere make-believe?

Like ungainly birds we dance before each other,
dipping and bobbing, our mating ritual gone wrong,
our elusive shapes foiling all purchase. Little good
finding ourselves if we lose each other.

The future is nothing if we cannot sway it.
Bereft of corners, all we have is our daily flux
to sift and winnow for kernels of form, shape enough
to cling to, defined enough to know what we hold.​

Darrell Petska

Darrell Petska's poetry has appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Star 82 Review, Verse-Virtual and widely elsewhere (see conservancies.wordpress.com). Darrell has tallied a third of a century as communications editor for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 40 years as a father (six years as a grandfather), and almost a half century as a husband. He lives outside Madison, Wisconsin.